I used the rest of my birthday money to treat myself to delicious quality brand new sheepskin slippers. I’ve been walking around in thick socks, due to the lack of slippers so these are a vast improvement. I love how this pair have the cutaway, making them easy to get my feet into.
First wearing of the slippers! Sentinel is going through an interesting shoe phase and is busy checking out the news from my shoes.
I am a great fan of the fog as it is mysterious and always reminds me of South Boston, whose siting in Boston Harbor guaranteed a lot of foggy mornings. So it was lovely for someone to arrange fog for me on my birthday.
When you don’t have much clothing (and I have a goodly amount by choice, but not a ton) sometimes you need to wash everything. Other times I desire to be dressed because I have things to do around the house, but don’t want to actually put on pants. What do I need? A House Frau dress. I’ve been wanting one for awhile and my trip to the Goodwill yielded this classic. I love it. It’s a great color, not binding at all and, yes, incredibly unflattering. But that doesn’t matter, because after this picture, the public won’t see it.
It was a good Goodwill trip in other ways. I also got this great shell which is a bit more flattering than the House Frau dress.
And! In the Halloween section, of all places, I got this fabulous car coat which not only goes with the dress, it bridges the gap between the “too cold for no coat, too hot for the lightest weight coat.” Yipee!
I’m a member of the Religious Education (RE) Committee at church. At my church Religious Educators were called Sunday School teachers when I was growing up. The RE Committee has many duties, one of which is to assist during trainings. Last night was the first night of the two-day teacher training before the start of the church school year and I and two of my fellow committee members were tasked with creating a sandwich dinner. One person did the “big shop” for supplies, and we all unloaded the food, chopped things, plated things, gathered enough plates, glasses and silverware for everyone and arranged everything buffet style.
As the teachers were going through the line, we observed, taking care of needs here and there; refilling water pitchers, chopping more tomato, picking up dropped items and exposing them, what have you. After everyone had been served, we served ourselves.
I was standing with my fellow committee members near the buffet table eating a rice cake sandwich and had just taken a rather large bite when a woman approached with a camera. She held it up, the now universal command of “arrange yourself for a portrait!” and my fellow committee members moved in on both sides of me. I don’t mind impromptu portraits, but was not really thrilled to be captured with a large amount of food in my mouth. Still, I made the best of the situation, shifting the food to the middle of my mouth, dropping the plate to waist level in anticipation that the photograph would be from the chest up and giving a great big closed mouth smile.
At that point, another woman noticed that I was holding the plate at waist level. “Patricia!” she said in a scolding voice, and held out her hands to me to take the plate. I handed it over, attempted to move some more food in my mouth with my hand and straightened back up for the picture that I was at this point not at all interested in being a part of.
“Are you done and ready for the photo?” The photographer asked in a rather dismissive tone, as if I was being the troublesome one.”
“Just take the picture.” My lack of enthusiasm came through despite the food in my mouth, I reassumed my closed mouth smile the picture was taken and we all moved on.
The incident was over, but sticks with me. Who was the rude one here? From the scolding tones of both the bystander woman and the photographer I am left with the impression that I was. But having a camera in one’s hand does not guarantee cooperative subjects. In fact, with the ubiquitous of cameras, we seem to have lost the ability to ask permission to take a photo, grandly assuming that everyone is ready to smile for the camera. The same photographer took many photos earlier when I was setting the food out. I was busy and concentrating on my work and so ignored her efforts and went about mine, but felt a twinge of annoyance and would have preferred not be photographed at that particular moment. Later, if she had asked to take my fellow committee members photo in appreciation of our efforts, I would have been able to say, “can you wait a minute, so I can finish chewing?” and posed in the grand style my women’s college social education has prepared me for. But she just held up her camera and assumed compliant subjects.
When I was growing up and film was expensive photos were comparatively rare. A few years ago, looking at the photos my friend had amassed from high school, I marveled that the number of photos she had taken of our entire high school experience was equal to perhaps a month of our photos taken today as we’re both bloggers. But when film was expensive, there was much more of an opt-out clause. In fact, several of my friends didn’t like having their photos taken at all, going so far as to hide their faces in the nearest corner to avoid the camera. With the expense of film removed from the process, one can now snap photos of the reluctant subject until they comply with our wishes. But should we?
I see the effects of digital photography at school. It has become another means of teachers for teaching, for illustrating the passages in their classrooms. At the beginning of the school year, the teachers take close-up portraits of students, enlarge them and hang them on the wall with the students’ names. They tend to do this at recess, and I watch their progress as they work through their class list. Every student complies, standing at attention, smiling for the camera. None of today’s generation seems to be camera shy and I don’t think it occurs to them they could be, as the digital photography revolution happened before their birth.
Still, I think people with cameras in hand should keep in mind that the photograph they would like to capture isn’t necessarily a priority for the people in the photograph. A simple, “May I take your photo?” would be helpful to those who are not willing to be photographed, either in the moment, or ever. And when asking, photographers need to leave room for a gracious “No thank you.” For whatever reasons.
Today was the last day of my summer reading volunteer stint. It was a great volunteer gig. I showed up for two hours every Monday afternoon and assisted children 0-18 participating in the program. This involved stamping their summer reading passport and letting them select a prize depending on what level they had achieved. This took about 15 minutes total of every two hour shift. The rest of the time I caught up on my own summer reading, watched the patrons in the library and absorbed the varying hubbub that is my popular neighborhood library branch. It was a good way to end my Monday workdays.
Have you thought about volunteering for Summer Reading? They will need you next summer, so I encourage you to sign up. Just like my friend Kelly encouraged me to sign up. You won’t be sorry. And you get a t-shirt!
Eight classes completed. Approximately $8000.00 spent to earn my Graduate Certificate in Middle School Math. The certificate arrived today. It’s not so much a certificate as an approved form.
Matt and I have been reading Pride and Prejudice where one of the general items of gossip is how many pounds various gentlemen have per year. Mr. Bingley is a good catch with four of five thousand pounds per year. Then Mr. Darcy enters the scene and is said to have ten thousand pounds per year. This circa 1800, so four or five thousand pounds will take you pretty far, but ten thousand? Wow.
I’ve been putting money into a savings account to fund an emergency fund of three months of living expenses for more than 10 years. The emergency fund has been depleted time and again over the years, mostly because of emergencies. There have also been periods of employment where I could only save $25.00 per month. When you are shooting for $5100 in savings, depositing $25.00 per month can be particularly disheartening.
Still I persisted. And this month, I’m proud to say that I have reached my emergency fund’s first goal. Yip-yip-yipee! My next goal will be to have six months of living expenses in the bank.
What should I do to celebrate? Perhaps buy a pony?
Kidding. I’ll probably read another personal finance book.
Friday, I was exhausted. “You would think,” I told one of my colleagues, “that I had worked 40 hours this week and done six interviews and a kindergarten roundup. However, due to my 32 hour a week work schedule and several conflicts, I did none of them. Still, I could hardly motivate myself to get to the ballet Friday night. When I came home, I was the kind of tired where it seems like a better option to sit on the couch and stare at the wall because going to be takes to much energy.
Saturday was a different matter. I woke up remarkably refreshed–a well rested rising being a rare occurrence in my life. I went to the gym, did laundry, hung it to dry, harvested some greens and radish from the backyard, cooked and ate them, spent several hours alternating through homework and planting root vegetables in the garden, folded and put away all of my laundry and hung out with Matt. All with a level of energy I haven’t had in forever.
It was the sun. Yesterday the sun shown all day. It was warm, and promised of summer. The vegetable beds dried out. The mustard plant flowered. The asparagus shot up. The cilantro threatened to bolt. It warmed my back as I was planting seeds and Matt came back from his bike ride with a sunburn.
It rained all of May. If you live in Portland, you know what I mean. It rains a lot here, yes, but this rain was persistently nasty and cold. I’ve only worn sandals once this year. My summer clothes sit in a box under my bed. There is threat that the strawberries will rot in the field, if it doesn’t warm up. We’ve had a month solid of March rain, with its reminders of winter, rather than May rain, with its promise of summer. Today it is raining again. I think I’ll be okay, thanks to that one glorious day of sun.
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